Step 4: Get more control

Step 5: Get creative

So this is a very easy circuit to make some LEDs blink. You may use it for your chrismas decoration, or simply to have a little light show in your roo...

Sometimes you need simply some blinky LEDs, for chrismas decoration, blinky artworks or just to have fun with blink blink blink. I'll show you how to make a cheap and simple circuit with up to 6 blinking LEDs.

Note: This is my first instuctable and i'm not a native english speaker - so please excuse my mistakes.

Step 1: Parts you need

So you need some cheap electronic parts, here we go:

- 1 CMOS 74C14 - its a small and really cheap microchip, we use it to create oscillators to make our LEDs blink- some jumper wires- a breadboard to stick the parts on it- a 9V block battery with batteryclipfor further experiments a potentiometer around up to 1 M

for every LED-Circuit (you can add up to 6 to one chip) we need- an LED ;-)- a capacitor (around 4,7 µF, you may vary the value to get different blink frequencies)- a resistor 100k-200k- a resistor to limit the led current, around 1-3k

Step 2: Okay lets stick it together

lets go to our first blinky cirtcuit. Place the CMOS Chip in the middle of the breadboard as shown on the image.

Connect pin 7 of the chip with the ground (-) and pin 14 with the VCC (+)-bus on the breadboard.

Now connect the capacitor to pin 1 and the ground (attent to the direction, there is a minus printed on the Cap - that lead goes to the ground). Place a 100k-200k resistor between pin 1 and 2 of the chip. Then you need to add the series resistor (1-3k) between pin 2 and the LED. Attent to the right direction of the LED. The shorter leg goes to the ground.

I hope you may see it on the image.

If youre done, connect the batty to the plus and minus bus of the breadboard and your first LED should start blinking. :-)

Good little circuit. If you wanted to expand it, you could replace the LED with a transistor, and use that to source a few more LEDs (which could be placed in amongst other sets of LEDs operating at different frequencies).

You could also replace the resistor between pins 1 and 2, with a pair of resistor and diodes in series. You can use this to adjust the mark/space ratio of the oscillation.

R1 Diode |---===----|<|----| --| |----- |---===----|<|----| R2 Diode

Combining these two will allow you to make a more random twinkling pattern for xmas lights.

About This Instructable

Bio:I like to play with electronics and other fun stuff, modify things to make them more useful or just more funny, putting things together that seem not to fit to make funny stuff. Sharing ideas make the...read more »